


Collateral

by Leonawriter



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Game: Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep, Gen, It started out cute and fluffy, Spoilers - Kingdom Hearts III, and then got sad real quick, set pre-game but also during and after, whoops?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-05
Updated: 2019-03-05
Packaged: 2019-11-12 10:39:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18009386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leonawriter/pseuds/Leonawriter
Summary: They say evil flourishes when good people choose to just stand aside and watch.Braig never truly had the option not to.





	Collateral

It's the kids that get to him the most, he has to admit - which he can do, just in the privacy of his own mind. Sometimes, he looks at them, and remembers seeing wave upon wave of clashing keyblades, most of 'em not even with the top of their hair up to his shoulder hight, and if that hadn't been depressing enough, the fact that keyblades were all that was left of 'em sure was.

Part of him hopes he'll never have to see  _that_ again, though the part that'll always be the Master's apprentice, that be the bit that remembers he has to wait, and watch, because the thing that he's watching for is the  _next_  war, and...

But that's not yet. He can feel it coming, the darkness seeping into the worldline like a taint, familiar and poisonous, but it's not there yet. He's got time, and that's good, even if he's impatient enough to vibrate off the walls some days, when he's not got his head mixed up with another person's memories.

There were plenty of kids in Radiant Garden, but only one that lives  _in_ the castle, where Braig's living, and Ienzo is... quiet.

Being  _quiet_ isn't bad, he tells the kid, in an aside one day. The mouse listens with wide eyes. Well, one wide eye, the other one was hidden. But he'd had to impress on the little guy, that it was - even if they were in a castle full of science and learning and serious stuff - alright to have a bit of fun with it, too.

He could swear he felt the temperature drop the first time Even found them going through the halls, Ienzo on his shoulders, asking what he thought he was doing, Ienzo could  _fall_ , but it wasn't as though the kiddo didn't have a handhold, even if the scarf did get a bit tight at times, and hey, he'd catch him if he  _did_ fall.

"What," he said, "kiddo likes to feel tall, don't you?"

Ienzo didn't nod, exactly, but it almost felt like the kid was _laughing,_ and Even's face softened, even though he'd still asked for Ienzo to be put down, and for them to walk through the halls like  _normal people._

Normal people, though?  _As if._ Like any of them were normal. Like  _he_ could ever be normal. 

A slight tug on the right of his scarf had him telling Even he had places to be, important things to do.

The library, usually, going where it was quiet and full of books to be read, notes to be put in margins, and stories to be told.

Sometimes the kitchens.

Other times, the labs, when they'd wind up following whoever happened to be down there, and Braig would relate what he took the experiments to mean - usually some nonsense, prompting the "actual" scientists to correct him - never noticing how sometimes, he'd also be pointing out their mistakes, because Braig was really just a glorified guard, not really much of an apprentice, given he'd been taken in mostly out of curiosity and generosity, and his own need to keep watch over a place so interested in the workings of the heart as this.

On a few rare occasions, he'd be the one who'd encourage the kid to actually get fresh air, see something outside of the castle. It wasn't as if he was unguarded, after all.

And then

It felt like almost no time at all

Because of course it did, it wasn't as though  _millennia_ had passed-

And the darkness was  _here_.

...

He wakes up, and for a moment he forgets where he is (when? who?) and all he remembers is that a keyblade had been pointed in his face, and despite all the many lives he's lead, all the times he's nearly died and all the times he'd survived, it's the keyblade that sends him back, feeling small, and-

_But Master, you said I was just supposed to watch, couldn't you have warned me - anything - I didn't want to fight anyone!_

_-_ hurting. 

 _This will be my last body,_ he'd written, a while back, in some journal of a sort he'd never show any of the others here, and now this last body of his was damaged, something heavy resting on one of his eyes.

If he hadn't recognised the footsteps and the figure hadn't approached from the right angle, he wouldn't even have known it was Even, coming to check up on him, and he just can't bring himself to glare in return.

_That's my eye, damn brat took my eye - I'm a sharpshooter, damn it._

"Ienzo was nearly attacked by monsters of some sort while looking for you," Even says. "He was saved by a most interesting young boy, but even so, it took a while before I was able to have him tell me that he had ventured out in search of  _you._ Because he was worried. With good reason, given what we had to patch you up from. Just  _what_ you thought you were doing, I have no idea - those wounds seemed  _darkness_ , of all things."

Even comes closer, and checks on the bandages, and Braig can't help but fidget, because if he hadn't been so damn impatient, he wouldn't have been hurt in the first place, and Ienzo wouldn't have been in danger-

If he hadn't trusted that Xehanort-

He was only supposed to  _watch_ , after all.

...

(Ienzo, the smart kid, didn't follow so much after Xehanort, watched them with curious eyes and with hands scrunched up in his tiny lab coat, but always a bit more wary than some of the others. 

Smart little mouse. 

It was just a shame it didn't last.

Though, if he's honest with himself, he's probably at least partly to blame for that, too.

Ienzo was so used to following after him and Even both, after all, as well as the others, as if they'd never steered him wrong before.

And maybe they hadn't.

Before.)

...

He walks into the lab, the computer control room, and sees them, and his first thought is  _there has to be a way to help them, this can't be it,_ because that was Even and Ienzo on the floor there, and losing people like that had never been in the job description-

(Except when it had, because the role he'd been given had been to  _watch_ , while everyone he'd ever cared for went at each other's throats, keyblades at each other's hearts.)

He's barely even started, when he starts asking Xehanort if this is what he wanted, and he wonders if this had always been in the plan, and there's a cold sort of rage that he can barely put a name to, that's old and bitter and outright damn deadly, because Ienzo'd just been a little  _kid_ , he shouldn't have been hurt, he wasn't in anyone's way-

Except, that's his keyblade in front of him again, and two thoughts circle and spiral around in his head and his heart before he drops to the ground-

_I was only supposed to watch, how was I supposed to just watch this,_

and

_Did you see this too, Master?_


End file.
